


powered up

by jinwoosmile



Category: ASTRO (Band)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Gen, tags to be updated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12200139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinwoosmile/pseuds/jinwoosmile
Summary: Yoon Sanha's perfectly normal world is thrown on its head when a multi-dimensional portal opens up and spits out aliens. With newly discovered super healing, Sanha must cope with the death of his family and adjust to living with a house full of strangers at the same time. Will he be able to become a super hero, and join the ranks of the A Unit? Sanha isn't sure, but with some guidance, some new friends, and a lot of training, he may be able to help stop aliens from harming the rest of the world.





	1. Chapter 1

Sanha had always considered himself pretty normal. He did well enough in his classes, bickered with his older brother, wasted a significant amount of time on video games. He was pretty skinny, and taller than most of the other people his age—so maybe not quite normal in those regards. On the whole, though, Yoon Sanha was an average, well-adjusted young adult.

Most of his friends, too, were average, well-adjusted young adults. Sanha wouldn’t say he had been the most popular kid in high school, but he certainly wasn’t _un_ popular. He had a solid circle of friends, hanging out with them after school and on the weekends. He looked forward to hanging out with them over the summer break between high school and college, too.

In fact, he was kicking off the summer doing exactly that—wandering the streets of Hongdae with his friend Byungchul, exploring where they’d be going to school two months from then.

“I can’t believe I got into Hongik,” Sanha said again, for what felt like the millionth time since he got his acceptance letter from the prestigious art school for vocal and music performance.

Beside him, Byungchul snorted. “You’re more than talented enough, stop saything that.” Sanha glowed under Byungchul’s praise, preening a bit as they continued walking. Byungchul groaned. “Don’t stand up straight, you’re too tall,” he mumbled. All of his sentences were directed at the ground, as they always were when Byungchul spoke.

Sanha could only smile wider. “Should’ve eaten your vegetables when you were little, then, Chullie.” He couldn’t quite make out what Byungchul said in response, but there were some definite dark mutterings that floated up from his left as they continued strolling down the crowded streets of Hongdae.

They slowed at one of the many street shops, Sanha’s eyes caught by the jewelry a vendor had on display. “What time are you supposed to meet your parents again?” Byungchul muttered, tugging on Sanha’s sleeve in impatience.

One of the conditions of Sanha roaming Hongdae for the afternoon had been that he meet his parents for dinner. It was their anniversary, and he and his older brother were treating them to the meal. “About ten minutes,” he told Byungchul, picking up a necklace and holding it up. “Do you think my mom would like this?” It was a thin leather band, with a flat blue pendant that looked a bit like a polished stone hanging off of it.

Byungchul’s response was another inaudible mutter that Sanha took to be a ‘yes,’ pulling out his wallet and handing the lady working the table a few bills. Honestly, Byungchul was not as normal as Sanha—he was kind of short, probably only 174 centimeters, and far less popular. Sanha had never seen him hang out with anyone else from their school, most people thinking Byungchul was weird and avoiding him. One of his friends had once asked Sanha why he bothered to hang out with Byungchul at all—Sanha’s response had been a shrug, and then he had continued working on the chord sequence on the guitar that had been evading him for the past couple days.

With a short bow Sanha thanked the street vendor, and then he and Byungchul continued towards the restaurant where the rest of the Yoon family was waiting.

Yoon Sanha was an average, well-adjusted teenager. He enjoyed playing the guitar and was going to study music Hongik University. He was about to say goodbye to his friend and have dinner with his family.

Or at least, that was the plan until a hole opened up in the sky and aliens flooded Hongdae.

“Dude,” Byungchul said, and Sanha was looking up even before the other boy hit his arm because _wow_ , Byungchul rarely spoke that clearly. But then he saw the weird seam that was forming in the sky over the street, and Sanha opened his mouth to ask what the heck it was.

His sentence was lost when the seam split open and terrifying creatures came pouring into the world, a description for which Sanha could only think “alien monster.” Screams immediately flooded the area, people running in every which direction as the alien monsters continued to stream out of what must have been some dimensional split.

Byungchul had disappeared, Sanha realized belatedly. He should probably move, too, but he was frozen stiff with fear, standing on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant he was meeting his family at. He was helpless but to stare at the creatures—giant, loping things that looked like they had been made from tar. They were bipedal, walking on two legs that had knees that bent backwards. _Like a wolf_ , Sanha thought faintly, watching as one of them lobbed some small, circular object into the air. Like an idiot, Sanha watched the thing arch into the air—watched until he realized it was heading towards the restaurant, and that explosions had started ringing up and down the street, and— _oh_ , Sanha thought, watching the object land directly outside the restaurant.

Yoon Sanha was an average, well-adjusted teenager. At age nineteen, Yoon Sanha watched his average world crumble, as the round object blew up outside the restaurant and sent him hurtling into the air.

* * *

“What a waste,” someone said, in a forlorn voice.

Sanha wondered if he was imagining the voice. If he was imagining the voice, maybe he was also imagining the pain in his body, because _oh my God_ , it felt like every bit of him was on fire.

“Just a kid,” the voice continued. “What a tall kid. God.”

Some hands proceeded to prod at Sanha’s body. He assumed they belonged to the voice that was floating off somewhere to his left, the same side that was currently being poked at. The hands hit a particularly angry spot, and Sanha groaned and tried to roll away from the touch. There was a shout of surprise, and then what sounded like someone falling onto the ground and shuffling backwards.

A beat of silence. Then,

“Soap couple!” the voice shouted, and Sanha winced at the volume. Even his ears were hurting—though by some small miracle, the pain that radiated through his whole body was starting to fade. “Soap couple, someone’s alive over here!”

If Sanha hadn’t been preoccupied with feeling like he’d been trampled by wildebeests like Mufasa, he would have considered what a strange thing to call someone that was. The slightest possibility of a meditation on the name “soap couple” was dashed, though, when the hands returned to him, gentler this time but still causing pain.

The crunch of gravel announced what Sanha assumed was a part of the soap couple. Vaguely he was aware of a presence crouch on his side, opposite the first person. “I told you not to call us that,” the voice mumbled.

“You _could_ be, if you would just _tell him—_ ”

The debris from the explosion crunched again, announcing the arrival of a third person. Sanha wondered vaguely if he’d die before the three people could do anything to help him. “This kid’s alive?” the voice said, deep and soothing, though sounding shocked. There was a thud as this third person dropped to his knees, next to where the first half of the “soap couple” was. “Student?” the voice said, and Sanha immediately trusted this person with his life (or whatever remained of it). “Can you hear me?”

Sanha took a deep breath, steeling himself to nod, but the person seemed to realize what he was going to do.

“Don’t move your head!” he said immediately, and the presence of what must have been his hands seemed to hover over Sanha’s shoulders. “You could have a spine or neck injury. Can you open your eyes?”

That was a good question. When Sanha had first started coming to, he had felt like if he moved, he might break into a million pieces. Now though, some of the pain had faded a bit—enough that he could relax his face a little, and slowly opened his eyes.

Staring down at him was the most beautiful man Sanha had ever seen.

“Oh,” Sanha said, and then was startled by how weak his own voice sounded.

The beautiful man smiled, and Sanha felt very, very small. “There we are,” he said. “You’re quite the miracle, aren’t you?” The man moved back a little, and Sanha’s field of vision widened as the man stood. Now, he could see a second man and oh _lord_ he was just as beautiful as the first, in a completely different kind of way. He looked like the kids Sanha had avoided in high school, with sharp eyes and broad shoulders and multiple piercings around the cartilage of his ear. He was standing over Sanha, arms crossed over his chest.

“What are we supposed to do with him?” Piercings said, obviously addressing Beauty. Sanha didn’t appreciate being talked about as if he weren’t here, but—well, he was starting to feel a bit better. Perhaps these men were angels and their presence alone was enough to begin healing him.

“Well, we certainly can’t leave him here,” Beauty said, placing his hands on his hips. Sanha wondered vaguely who these people were. They were wearing strange clothing, things that looked kind of like Hawkeye’s clothes in the _Avengers_ movies.

The first voice spoke up again. “What are we supposed to tell Jinwoo?” the voice’s owner said. Sanha still didn’t dare move his head, not after Beauty’s waning, so he couldn’t see the face that the voice belonged to. “We found this kid, he wasn’t dead, so we’ve adopted him?”

“Maybe we should take him to the hospital.”

The three began to bicker about what they should do with Sanha. Idly, Sanha pondered their identity. They were definitely together, a group of some kind, but it was also painfully obvious that none of them were the leader.

Sanha was in the middle of contemplating what their leader might be like when suddenly pain flared in his ribs, white-hot and agonizing enough to make him shout and screw his eyes shut again. “Agh!”

The three’s conversation dropped silent. “Oh my god,” the first voice said.

“Oh my god,” Piercings’ voice seconded.

The pain persevered for another moment, and then, as suddenly as it had come on, began to fade. Sanha let out a rush of air, quivering a bit as he relaxed back into the ground. Slowly, he was able to open his eyes again, and found all three men looking down at him. The first voice, unlike Piercings and Beauty, who were wearing all black, had on an orange top.

“Kid,” Orange Shirt said. “I think you just healed multiple broken ribs and a massive laceration.”

Sanha blinked. Piercings blinked. Beauty blinked. Orange Shirt began to smile. “He’s coming back with us,” he announced loudly, head snapping up to look at Beauty and Piercings.

A beat of silence. Then, “I think that would be best,” Beauty agreed, nodding. He then waved a hand, and suddenly Sanha was _floating up from the ground_. “Bin, can you drive? I need to focus on making sure he doesn’t hit anything.”

Piercings—Bin, Sanha supposed, in the part of his mind that wasn’t panicking because _oh my god I’m not on the ground I’m floating in midair this stranger is making me FLOAT IN MIDAIR—_ began to whine a bit. “I wanted to ride the motorcycle,” he said.

Beauty frowned at Bin, and opened his mouth to deliver what was surely going to be an admonishment that sounded like a parent, but Orange Shirt cut him off.

“Hey, the kid’s gone white. Is he gonna pass out?”

For the second time in a very short period of time, Sanha fainted.

* * *

Murmuring voices woke Sanha up.

It was a slow kind of waking up, the kind where your ears wake up before the rest of you. His bed was warm and soft, and Sanha was content to let the voices continue. It was probably his parents, maybe his brother, wandering around the kitchen and fixing breakfast. With that thought, Sanha made the decision to continue his relationship with his bed, because getting up surely meant doing some kind of household chore. So he snuggled into his blankets a bit more fully and tried to find sleep once more.

Slumbering, though, was hard to come by. The longer Sanha laid in bed, the more unsettled he felt. Something was not right.

Firstly, the voices were too clear. They sounded closer than they should coming through a few walls and a door—clear, like they were only a couple meters away.  Also, there was a regular beeping that definitely did not belong in his house.

Secondly, there were too many voices, and all of them were male.

Third, the longer he laid there, the less like his own bed did Sanha’s current location feel.

Sanha felt his heart begin to speed as the details of a disturbing dream about aliens and bombs started to filter into his brain. Dimly, he noticed the beeping increase as well.

One of the voices became clearer. “His heart rate picked up.” The voice brought to mind a very beautiful face, and Sanha’s breathing began to quicken as well. “Oh god—I think he’s starting to panic. Where’s Jinwoo?”

“I’ll go get him,” another voice said, and all Sanha could see in his mind’s eye was the color orange as he heard a set of feet thump away.

A split in the air. Aliens. Byungchul disappearing. Some kind of grenade. An explosion that knocked him up into the air and out of consciousness. Waking up in pain. Three beautiful men. Floating up into the air.

The beeping—a distant, calm part of his brain told Sanha that it was probably a heart rate monitor—got even faster. It was becoming difficult to breathe, and Sanha was faintly aware of the high-pitched hitching noises he was making with every inhale. He didn’t dare open his eyes, if he opened his eyes and he wasn’t in his room that meant it wasn’t a dream. Vaguely he was aware of the first voice saying things to him, but he wasn’t able to process a single word of it.

Explosion. Floating. Where are his parents. Aliens. Pain. Necklace.

A new voice cut through the panic. “Hey bud?” Sanha wondered where he was. “Hey, we need to regulate your breathing. I’m gonna grab your wrist, okay?”

Frantically, Sanha nodded, and then a warm hand wrapped around his wrist, fingers pressing into his pulse point. Almost immediately, breathing was easier. His mind was calming down, and he listened as this new voice counted out for him to inhale, hold, and then exhale. The longer the hand touched his wrist, the calmer he felt.

After what felt like a small eternity, the grip on his wrist loosened. “There you go,” the voice said. “Do you want to open your eyes?”

Sanha considered this for a moment, and then shook his head.

“That’s fine,” the voice said. “Do you want me to tell you where you are?”

He considered again, and then slowly nodded.

“You’re in Seoul,” the voice continued. It was deep and soothing. “In Gwanak-gu. Seoul National University is about fifteen minutes away.”

“Twenty if you take the bus,” a new voice muttered, and there was a brief shuffle that sounded like someone getting hit on the arm.

The deep voice returned. “Ignore Minhyuk,” it said, and Sanha had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. The impulse to smile disappeared when he realized he didn’t know a Minhyuk. After a moment, he swallowed.

“I think I want to open my eyes,” he said.

“Go for it,” the voice said.

Taking a deep breath, Sanha slowly blinked his eyes open. He squinted at first, overwhelmed by the bright lights and stark white ceiling he was looking up at. That was plain enough, and after his eyes adjusted Sanha was able to open them up all the way. He turned his head a bit and found the owner of the soothing voice, a man with kind eyes and a freckle under his lip. His hair was dyed blond and squashed under a backwards snapback.

“Hi,” the man said. “I’m Jinwoo.”

Sanha nodded slowly, looking around. The room wasn’t huge, but there were a few other empty beds and equipment that looked like it belonged in a hospital. The walls were white but not intimidatingly so, and instead of hospital beds there were twin beds with lots of pillows and blankets. Behind Jinwoo, there was another man he didn’t recognize, and then the Beauty from earlier. He’d lost his Hawkeye clothes and was instead dressed in black jeans and a button up, standing at a counter with a computer and seeming absorbed in whatever was on the screen.

A feeling akin to dread settled in Sanha’s stomach. “So,” he said, and then coughed a little. Jinwoo nodded towards the nightstand, where a cup of water was sitting. Sanha ignored it. “What happened to me?”

There was a beat of silence. “How much do you remember?” Jinwoo asked, and though his voice was still steady, Sanha could hear the hesitance in it.

Letting his eyes fall closed again, Sanha exhaled. “A split in the sky,” he said. “Like something out of a movie. Monsters. An explosion.” He also remembered pain, and screaming, and thinking he had died, but those didn’t seem like they needed to be mentioned.

From beside him, Jinwoo gave a hum. “Anything after that?” he asked gently.

Sanha felt his brow furrow. What had happened after the explosion? He’d...he’d woken up feeling like his entire body was going to break into a million pieces. “Someone found me,” he offered. “He called two more people over. One of them is the guy at the computer.” His fingers tingled a bit as he remembered floating up into the air, unsupported by anything else, and Sanha jerked upwards. “You made me float!” he semi-shouted.

The beautiful man glanced up from his computer and smiled. “You’re correct,” he said. “And _you_ survived an explosion that leveled an entire restaurant, despite being not two meters from the epicenter of it.”

Sanha blinked. “How do you know where I was?”

The man twisted the computer screen toward him. "Dongmin," Jinwoo said from beside him, tone warning.

The man–Dongmin, apparently–ignored him, pressing a button on the computer. On the screen, some grainy security camera footage showed the outside of the restaurant. Sanha was standing outside of it, and someone short and kind of squat—Byungchul, Sanha realized—was standing next to him. Beauty tapped a button on the keyboard, and the footage started. Byungchul darted out of frame, and Sanha stayed frozen on the sidewalk. A couple seconds later, a round object landed on the street in front of the restaurant. Sanha—both on screen and sitting in the bed—stared at it until it exploded, wiping the security camera out of existence.

A sick feeling settled in Sanha’s stomach.

The third man in the room, one Sanha didn’t recognize, peered at his face curiously. “He looks like he’s gonna puke,” he observed.

Jinwoo frowned mightily. “You’re not helping anything,” he said, and then turned to Sanha. His face drained a little bit when he got a look at Sanha’s face. “Dongmin?” he said, voice rising a bit, and the pretty man nodded.

A small trashcan lifted itself off of the ground and floated straight into Sanha’s lap, which was a lucky location because it was enough to make Sanha vomit.

“This is not going like I had hoped,” Jinwoo murmured as he thunked Sanha on the back before rubbing over the spot he’d hit.

The man that Sanha didn’t know—though, he really didn’t know any of these men, but at least he had names for Jinwoo and now Dongmin—snorted. “How did you hope it’d go? ‘Hi, kid, aliens have been invading South Korea for a couple months, you should have died in the most recent invasion but you didn’t because you have superpowers.’ Sounds a little dumb, doesn’t it?”

Sanha stared at the man while Jinwoo gave him a mild glare, like he knew the man was correct but didn’t want to admit it. “Not helping,” he said finally.

A beat.

“Superpowers?” Sanha asked.

Another beat.

“Superpowers,” the man confirmed.

Sanha wondered if he was going to faint again. “Do you all have powers?” he asked weakly.

The man opened his mouth to speak again, but Jinwoo cut him off. “That’s a discussion for later,” he said, with a look sharp enough that the man shut his mouth with an audible click. Jinwoo turned back to Sanha, his expression becoming much softer. “Why don’t you get some rest?” he suggested.

As if Sanha could ever sleep again. Or maybe he _was_ sleeping, and this was all a very elaborate dream. Maybe Byungchul had put something in his soda last night while they were playing video games and eating too much pizza. Instead of voicing this, though, Sanha said, “Okay.” And then he laid back down and closed his eyes, because that was easier than facing reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lame title? check. shaky updating future? check. lots of excitement to post? check.
> 
> all ingredients for one of mh's special fics are present and ready to go!! i've been sitting on this one for a while (and have an actual plan for the storyline!) but still prepare your hearts for the really lengthy update schedule that has plagued inked
> 
> like the story??? hmu on [tumblr](http://www.jinwoosmile.tumblr.com) where i sometimes post drabbles and other short writings that don't make it to ao3!!! <3<3<3


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’ll be back later tonight! You’re welcome to stay for as long as you need, we’ve got plenty of room!_
> 
> _–Jinwoo_
> 
> _(PS– if anyone calls you ‘Captain’ it’s because Bin called you Captain Marvel last night, and it seems like it stuck around. I told them not to, but, well–you’ll see soon enough.)_

Reality did not get easier to face.

The next time Sanha woke up, he was in a different room. He hadn’t been tired, but apparently he’d been sleeping hard enough for the three men to move him to a different bed without disturbing him.

Maybe they’d floated him there.

This room had pale yellow walls, the kind of color you’d paint a room if you didn’t know if you were having a baby boy or girl. The bed Sanha was in was bigger this time, with more pillows than the last and simple white sheets and bedding. Rolling to the right, Sanha sat up and stretched, and noticed a folded piece of paper on the bedside table. He picked it up and folded it open.

 

_Student–_

_I’m assuming since you’re reading this that you woke up alone in the room–sorry about that! I had to go out to run some errands, and I’m sure the others got distracted and ended up leaving you to sleep. When we moved you, you had fully healed from all your injuries–Dongmin wasn’t sure how much you’d initially been hurt, but by the time they got you back to the house you still had some pretty bad burns. If something doesn’t feel right, tell him and we’ll figure out what’s wrong!_

_I’ll be back later tonight! You’re welcome to stay for as long as you need, we’ve got plenty of room!_

_–Jinwoo_

_(PS– if anyone calls you ‘Captain’ it’s because Bin called you Captain Marvel last night, and it seems like it stuck around. I told them not to, but, well–you’ll see soon enough.)_

 

The note was ended with a doodle of what Sanha supposed was a person flashing a peace sign, but he wasn’t quite sure. Sanha set the note down and scrubbed his hands over his face. The way the note was written made it sound like it had only been a few hours since he’d initially woken up–if he remembered correctly, Jinwoo was the one with the snapback, who’d talked him down from panicking the last time he was awake.

For a moment, Sanha simply sat on the edge of the bed. So much had happened that it had almost struck his mind blank, as if his brain was refusing to settle into his new reality.

That blankness did not, however, extend to his stomach, which growled with startling volume.

Sanha blinked, pressing a hand into his belly. A glance around the room revealed a lack of anything edible, and he didn’t feel quite comfortable enough to begin searching through drawers on the off-chance that someone had hidden snacks somewhere in the room. So instead he stood up and shuffled over to the door.

Stepping out of the room into the hallway wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was when he reached the end of the hallway and stepped onto a balcony that Sanha’s jaw dropped.

He was high enough in the air to nearly have vertigo–he was on the fourth floor, and could only guess how high up in the air (High enough that his mother would have shrieked for him to stay away from the railing). The balcony wrapped around three fourths of the room, and each floor below them had one as well. The ground floor was a giant living room, with multiple couches and stylish design that was interrupted by signs of inhabitants– baskets of laundry were sitting on one couch, obviously midway through being folded. Other clothes (the cleanliness of which could not be determined) were strewn over the back of couches and the floor. Books and notebooks littered the room.

Sanha stared down at the living room, taking in the sights with eager eyes. The longer he stood there, the more he noticed, including voices–lots of them, seeming to be floating up from the bottom floor.

Figuring that finding other people was a good way to start finding food, Sanha wandered around until he found a set of stairs, and then stumbled down to the first floor. The stairs spit him out under the lowermost balcony, on the edge of the sprawling living room. The angle at which the stairwell ended had him facing the back of the house, where he could see straight into the kitchen, which was teeming with people.

As Sanha walked closer, he realized that the majority of the people seemed to be on their way out–they were spilling out of back doors, herded by a skinny man with pink hair. Voices were babbling over one another, shouts of playful annoyance or questions layering on top of each other. By the time Sanha made it to the threshold of the kitchen, the pink-haired man was holding a tall kid with blue hair by the shoulder, talking to two people. After a moment Sanha recognized the two as Orange Shirt and Unnamed Life Ruiner, the man that had told him about the super powers the first time he woke up.

“Let us know if you need anything,” The pink-haired man was saying as Sanha reached the giant island in the middle of the kitchen. “It doesn’t take long to get down here.”

“Will do,” Unnamed Life Ruiner said, at the same time that Orange Shirt went, “You say that every time and yet only show up after aliens invade.”

Pink Hair laughed, said a thank you for lunch (It’s  afternoon, then, Sanha thought), and then nudged the blue-haired boy towards the door. Sanha watched as they stepped outside, Pink Hair beginning to direct people around the house. Sanha’s jaw dropped once more when one of the people took off of the ground, flying up to the air of their own accord.

“Rock paper scissors, loser loads the dishes,” a voice said, bringing Sanha’s focus away from the wall of windows along the back of the kitchen. He turned and saw Orange Shirt and Unnamed Life Ruiner throwing hand signs for the game, and then Unnamed Life Ruiner cried out in disappointment as Orange Shirt gave a whoop.

Orange Shirt turned around, a bright smile on his face, and finally noticed Sanha. “Oh!” he said. “Superhealing kid!”

Sanha shifted in his spot. “Is that rice?” he asked, nodding towards the counter.

A bowl of rice and giant serving of vegetables later, Sanha had learned that the people who had left the builder were the “N Unit,” and that Unnamed Life Ruiner was, in fact, named Minhyuk, though he also was called Rocky. When Sanha had asked why, Orange Shirt–who was named Myungjun–had laughed and said he’d see at some point. Myungjun was leading him back up the stairs, taking him to “one of the labs” because Jinwoo had wanted Dongmin to “check him over for any abnormalities,” and abandoning Minhyuk to deal with the dishes.

“You mean besides the fast healing?” Sanha asked. Myungjun laughed loudly, and despite not having meant it as a joke, Sanha felt comforted by the sound. Even though he was at least six inches taller than Myungjun, the amount of energy the older boy radiated still made him feel _bigger_ than Sanha. “What are all the rest of these rooms?” he asked, when they passed what must have been the fourth door on the hall.

Myungjun made a vague flapping motion, gesturing back towards the balconies. “Most of the bedrooms are on the third and fourth floors,” he said. “The kitchen and other living places are on the bottom. Bathrooms are everywhere, if you wander long enough you’ll find one. This level has labs and training rooms.”

They finally stopped in front of a door, and Sanha’s insides suddenly twisted with anxiety at the thought of someone he didn’t know poking at him with lab equipment. Myungjun, however, didn’t give him a chance to voice that anxiety, pounding on the door and singing loudly, “Soap couple!”

He opened the door and bounded in, and Sanha was helpless but to follow him like a sheep after its shepherd.

His anxiety was forgotten as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the lab. It was hard to keep his jaw from falling in awe–giant windows stretched along one wall, overlooking a sprawling green plot of land and a driveway that seemed to curve under the house. A giant screen hung from another wall, with a hub of smaller screens in a semicircle in front of it, kind of like something Sanha always pictured in the headquarters of MI-6 when he read James Bond books.

Sanha had to pick up his pace to catch up to Myungjun, who had forged forward with gusto. He had to pick his way around the desks cluttered the room, some with computers, others covered in tools and abandoned machinery. As they walked deeper into the room, there was one with a tarp tossed over it that Myungjun stopped at with a coo and started to lift the tarp.

As he started to lift the blue plasticy fabric, a pen came flying across the room, hitting Myungjun’s hand with startling accuracy and making him cry out, dropping the tarp. Heavy footsteps sounded, and suddenly Piercings– _was he called Bin?_ –came charging up.

“Did you not see the _note_?” he snapped. He was as intimidating as he had been the other day, still dressed in a tank top and gesturing furiously at the tarp. Following his pointing finger, Sanha finally saw the note.

_Touch this and Bin will never see his One Piece Season 3 DVDs again. -HJ_

Myungjun clucked at him, clutching his hand close to his chest. “You and that stupid anime,” he said.

“It’s not _stupid_ ,” Bin said, folding his arms over his chest. The pout on his face was at odds with his strong-looking arms, and Sanha was torn between laughing and backing out of the room. Before he could make up his mind, though, Bin noticed him hovering behind Myungjun. “S’up, Captain Marvel?” he said, jerking his chin towards Sanha. “Here to see Dongminnie?”

There was a beat before Sanha remembered that being asked a question usually required an answer. “Uh,” he said. “Yes?” When Myungjun smiled at him encouragingly, he nodded. “Yes,” he repeated. “Here for, uh, Dongmin.”

“Mm. This way.” Bin turned around and started walking back in the direction he came bolting up from.

Almost as soon as he turned away, Myungjun crept back towards the tarp.

“If you touch that, I will literally set you on fire,” Bin called.

Sanha felt his eyes go wide, by Myungjun seemed nonplussed. “He’s a pyrokinetic,” he sighed, when he saw Sanha’s face. “I’ll look at it later. Let’s see Dongmin.” Then he forged ahead, as if Bin had not casually threatened to set him aflame. Shaking his head, Sanha walked after him, and they followed Bin further back into the room. Dongmin was standing in the middle of an open area. He ignored Bin as he walked by and flopped into a rolling stool. Books were floating slowly through the air, orbiting around Dongmin like satellites around a planet. Sanha briefly looked for wires, but then the image of a trashcan floating into his lap crossed his mind.

Sanha leaned forward. “So...his power,” he said, feeling the need to whisper. Dongmin had a look of utmost concentration on his face, eyes flicking from book to book faster than Sanha could keep track of. “Is it telekinesis?”

Myungjun hummed, head dipping in a nod. “Jinwoo likes to explain it with some English thing,” he said to Sanha. “Hey, what’s that movie Jinwoo’s always on about? Batilda, or something?” he called.

“ _Ma-_ tilda,” Dongmin said, without looking towards them. “A children’s book by British author Roald Dahl, made into a movie in 1996, about a little girl with an abusive family that developed telekinesis due to a lack of stimulation to her brain.” He turned to look at them, and the books started closing and floating back to the shelves lining the wall behind him. “I wish you guys would stop comparing my powers to hers,” he added.

“Good luck with that,” Bin muttered.

“Ignoring you,” Dongmin said lightly, then smiled and stepping forward towards them. “Now for the important thing: you’ve been with us for nearly two days, and we still don’t know your name,” he said.

Sanha blinked. “You don’t know my name?”

“You didn’t have an ID on you,” Bin called.

“If you had a wallet it must have gotten thrown in the detonation,” Dongmin said. “Go ahead and sit down, do you mind?”

Blinking some more, Sanha looked over his shoulder in time to see a rolling chair come to a stop behind him. He sat down, and Dongmin drew closer, a few wheeled machines rolling behind him. Sanha was struck again by his beauty, and wondered if that too was a superpower. If it was, he wanted to know where he could get it.

“Your name?” Dongmin repeated, and Sanha started.

“Right,” he said. “Sanha. I’m Yoon Sanha.”

“Alright Yoon Sanha,” Dongmin said, pulling one of the machines towards him. “Hold a hand out.” He clipped a heart rate monitor to Sanha’s finger, and then strapped a blood pressure cuff to his upper arm. As the cuff inflated, Sanha was fully aware of Dongmin’s critical gaze on him. Being under his line of vision made his skin crawl a bit with the attention, and instead of meeting his eyes Sanha looked down at the clip on his finger.

“Have you ever noticed that you heal exceptionally fast before?” Dongmin asked, turning to watch the monitor of the blood pressure reader.

The machine made a low buzzing, and the cuff inflating for a second time where Dongmin had wrapped it around Sanha’s arm. “Not really?” he said. “I mean...I didn’t really seem to get hurt much. I bruise easily,” he offered.

Dongmin hummed, reading the monitor as the cuff started letting out air in small increments. “How long did the bruises usually last?”

“A couple days, I guess. I never really noticed.”

Apparently his blood pressure was satisfactory, because Dongmin undid the cuff and hung it off of the machine, which rolled back towards the wall. “I think we need to do bloodwork,” Dongmin announced as he unclipped the heart rate monitor from Sanha’s finger. “If it was due to the bomb, leftover radiation may be lingering. Or it could be hereditary. Do you know of anyone in your family with superpowers?” he asked.

“No,” Sanha said. “Not that I know of. My family...” Everything fell away as, for the first time, he remembered his family, who had been in the restaurant when the bomb exploded. Dongmin kept talking, but it was barely a buzz in his ear as the words _my family_ looped, over and over, in Sanha’s head.

“We could always give him a bruise and see what happens,” Bin’s voice said, jerking Sanha out of his thoughts.

“What?” he said frantically. Dongmin must have noticed Sanha’s mild panic—or maybe he was just used to Bin making violent threats. “We’re not going to hurt Sanha just to see how he reacts,” he said mildly.

“Okay, but he still has to get initiated into the house,” Myungjun said. At some point he had moved and was leaning on a desk nearby.

Sanha looked at him in alarm. “Initiated?”

Which is how he found himself, almost twenty minutes later, kneeling on a small plastic sled at the top of the stairs on the fourth and uppermost floor.

Minhyuk, Myungjun, and Bin were all standing behind him–they had sent Dongmin down to the bottom to be on standby with medical equipment.

“How am I supposed to go around the corners?” Sanha asked nervously.

“It just kind of happens,” Minhyuk said. “Don’t worry.”

Sanha was very worried.

“Alright Dongmin, be ready!” Myungjun yelled over the balcony. He came up behind Sanha, and he and Minhyuk both placed their hands on his back. “On the count of three,” Myungjun said. “One, two–“

On _three_ , they shoved hard–harder than Sanha was expecting, harder than he would have thought a person was capable of. But that thought was quickly out of his head as he went flying down the staircase, yelling as he did. He was barely aware of anything but the rush of wind in his ears as he bumped his way around corners.

After what felt like an eternity (but in reality was probably thirty seconds at the most), Sanha was sliding across a flat surface. With a screech he slid right past Dongmin, his momentum still great enough that he slid nearly to the threshold of the kitchen. In fact, he stopped perfectly at a pair of socked feet.

Looking up, Sanha met the eyes of a blond man, whom he recognized as Jinwoo. Jinwoo was not smiling.

“Did he live?” Minhyuk yelled. From the fourth floor his voice nearly echoed.

Sanha looked over his shoulder in time to see Myungjun’s head pop over the edge of the balcony. He visibly started (even from four stories below) when he saw Jinwoo, and pulled his head back with a yelled cuss.

As the clatter of three people running down the stairs filled the house, Jinwoo sighed. “Welcome to the house, then,” he said, turning to walk back into the kitchen as the other boys came running into the kitchen, calling apologies and excuses as they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was shorter than i meant for it to be but by the time i got done writing the chapter was m a s s i v e so i guess i'm going to break this into two parts and hope for the best rip
> 
> as always come hmu on [tumblr](http://www.jinwoosmile.tumblr.com) bc i'm always ready to talk!!!


	3. Chapter 3

After Jinwoo returned to the house, a flurry of evening activities occurred. Dinner was made, stories were exchanged, and Sanha threw himself into the business of these strangers’ lives in order to escape his mind for a little bit longer. He helped cook dinner and clean dishes, dancing around other people and trying not to get in the way. For the most part, he succeeded, and a small part of him was impressed that he was able to slip into the pattern of life in a new place so easily.

After dinner, Dongmin and Bin disappeared to the lab. Jinwoo had a call come in on his phone, and excused himself from the kitchen.

“Who’s he talking to?” Sanha asked, putting away the last glass as he did.

Minhyuk hummed as he folded a towel. “Probably the leader of another unit,” he said. “We weren’t the only ones that sent people to the site the other day, so they’re probably pooling information.”

Sanha nodded. “How many other groups are there besides this one?”

Myungjun and Minhyuk exchanged thoughtful looks with each other. “I don’t know that there’s an exact count,” Minhyuk said.

“A lot,” Myungjun added with a nod.

The kitchen clean, Sanha continued to hover in the room with the other two. He couldn’t quite tell if he was welcome or not, but before he could ask, Myungjun and Minhyuk began an easy banter back and forth about what stories to tell him. They pulled Sanha into their circle effortlessly, happy to entertain him. Myungjun told fantastical stories, with Minhyuk regularly interrupting to call out exaggerations and inaccuracies. Through them, Sanha learned that there was a network of superheros all over the world. The large group of people that had been in the kitchen earlier was one of the other groups in South Korea.

They managed to make stories last late into the night. It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that Myungjun finally conked out on one of the couches in the living room. “That idiot’s gonna wake up with a messed up neck and we’re gonna have to listen to him complain about it,” Minhyuk yawned, shuffling up from the couch. He turned to Sanha. “Do you need help finding your room? It’s next to mine.”

Dread started to creep into Sanha’s stomach as he thought about being alone once more. “Yeah,” he said anyway. “Please.”

As they shuffled up the stairs, Minhyuk informed Sanha of the ages of everyone in the house, and delighted in finding out that Sanha was younger than him. For a brief moment, Sanha thought he might be able to pull Minhyuk back into conversation, but another long yawn proved otherwise. Instead of asking more questions, they bid each other good night outside of Sanha’s new room.

Even the cheerful yellow walls weren’t enough to diminish the sour agony in Sanha’s chest. As he laid in the comfortable bed, the only thought that ran through Sanha’s head was that his family had been inside the restaurant.

_You survived an explosion that leveled an entire restaurant_ , Dongmin had said.

Sleep did not come to relieve him from his thoughts. He laid there, motionless, staring at the ceiling for hours. When the sky started to lighten in the window, Sanha gave up on falling asleep and rolled out of bed. He shuffled into a pair of house shoes someone had put in the room, then left his room as quietly as possible.

The house was incredibly confusing. It was too big, with too many rooms, and Sanha got lost in it far too easily. Eventually, he managed to find his way back to the kitchen. When he tugged open the door that led out to the back porch, he half-expected an alarm to start going off. But the house stayed silent, lit only by the digital clocks on the coffee maker and oven, the time it took him to get from his room to the porch not quite enough for the sun to have risen.

Walking into the cold early morning air was like dunking his head into ice water. Immediately, Sanha felt more awake, his exposed skin tingling as he sat down on the porch steps. As he sat there, Sanha considered leaving the house. It’d be easy, now—everyone seemed to be asleep, or at least tucked away in invisible rooms. He could walk away and pretend none of this had happened.

_Except I can’t,_ Sanha thought. He’d survived an explosion that had leveled the restaurant his family had been in. If he left now, it wasn’t like he could go back to their apartment and see them again. A wave of guilt crashed over him. For half a day now he had avoided thinking about his family, and now their faces swam behind his eyes as the memory of being thrown into the air by a dry, hot force looped in his brain.

His breath was coming in sharp gasps. His family was dead, Sanha was alive because he healed at a superhuman speed. Family dead, him alive. If he hadn’t been hyperventilating Sanha would have laughed. It was the perfect tragic superhero backstory.

The door to the porch opened.

Frantically, Sanha tried to slow his breathing. He couldn’t appear even weaker in front of the other boys, not now that they had offered their superhero home to him even though he wasn’t a superhero. Being frantic about slowing his breathing, though, did nothing to actually calm him.

A heavy weight draped across his shoulders. “You’re gonna catch a cold if you sit out here without a jacket,” Jinwoo said, dropping down on the steps next to him. He was dressed in flannel pajama pants and a baggy sweatshirt, blond hair hanging messily over his forehead. Obviously had just rolled out of bed.

Sanha ducked under the blanket that Jinwoo had thrown over his back and tried not to feel responsible for Jinwoo being awake. They sat in silence for a few moments, and the longer they sat there, the more Sanha felt himself to calm down. The horrible high-pitched noise he was making faded, and he no longer felt quite like he was dangling over the edge of a cliff.

Beside him, Jinwoo hummed quietly. “I’m not usually awake for sunrise,” he said. “But it’s always nice when I am.”

Sanha nodded slowly, even though Jinwoo wasn’t looking at him. He tucked the blanket around himself a little tighter and followed Jinwoo’s gaze off to the horizon.

A bird flew above them, high enough to nearly be a speck in the lightening sky. After taking a moment to gather his nerves, Sanha said, “The explosion.”

Jinwoo glanced over at him.

Sanha swallowed. “Were there...were there any other survivors?”

The silent response was answer enough. Sanha nodded, turning back towards the horizon and pretending that his world hadn’t crumbled under his feet for what felt like the umpteenth time in the past twenty-four hours. He hoped Jinwoo couldn’t see the tears forming in his eyes.

Thinking your family was probably dead was one thing. Having it confirmed was another.

There was movement to his left, and Sanha glanced over to see Jinwoo digging in the pocket of his pajama pants. A moment later, Jinwoo extended his hand out to him, and Sanha let him drop the object into his palm.

It was the necklace he’d bought from the street vendor for his mother. It sat heavily in Sanha’s palm, and _God_ if he hadn’t been crying before he sure was now. “You had that in your hand when Bin and Dongmin got you into the infirmary,” Jinwoo said quietly.

Sanha sniffled, and tried to surreptitiously wipe his eyes on the blanket. Jinwoo didn’t say anything else, and while they sat on the porch the world slowly started to brighten.

The necklace sat heavily in his hand as Sanha considered his options.

Option one: he could leave, and go back to his apartment, and try to figure things out. Pros: he’d be back in his childhood home. Cons: he’d be back in his childhood home, without any of his family.

Option two: he could travel south and go live with his aunt and cousins. Pros: living with (extended) family. Cons: they probably thought he was dead, and having to explain the healing thing when he didn’t really understand it himself probably wouldn’t go well.

Option three: he...could stay. Here. On the outskirts of Seoul, with a bunch of strangers. Pros: these boys would probably be able to help him figure out the healing thing. Also, if aliens attacked again, Sanha would probably be safer with them than anyone else. Cons: he’d be living with a bunch of strangers, several of whom were very intimidating.

Sanha looked over at Jinwoo out of the corner of his eye. The older man had his head tipped back, basking in the pink light of the nearing daybreak. Jinwoo, at least, was really nice. His presence was grounding.

As if he could sense Sanha thinking about him, Jinwoo shifted a little. Without opening his eyes, he sighed. “I have a question,” he said quietly.

Sanha froze.

Jinwoo’s eyes opened slowly, and the concern in his face was easy to read. “Do you need to get in touch with your family?” Sanha hated the gentleness in his voice. “Most people...well, most people would have said something about getting in contact with them by now.”

Silence fell between them. Sanha swallowed around the thickness in this throat, tried to will away the tears that returned, burning his eyes and making his nose feel stuffy. Jinwoo didn’t seem in any hurry to move, so Sanha didn’t feel terribly for taking a minute to get himself back under a semblance of control.

“They were in the restaurant,” he finally managed to say, and his throat ached as he did.

Jinwoo nodded slowly, almost as if this was the answer he had been anticipating. Then he turned back towards the sun.

The same feeling of calm that Jinwoo had brought with him intensified slowly the longer they sat. Sanha wasn’t sure what he was more grateful for—Jinwoo not saying anything, or way he looked away so that he could shed a few more tears into the corner of the blanket.

It wasn’t until the sun broke over the horizon, washing everything in pink light, that Sanha looked back over at Jinwoo.

The man seemed to have dozed off a bit, his head lolling back as he leaned against the porch steps.

“Jinwoo,” Sanha whispered. Jinwoo immediately jerked awake, and Sanha couldn’t help the smile that made the corner of his lip quirk up. His stomach rolled a bit, wondering how he could smile when his whole family was dead and gone. “Is that your power?”

Jinwoo made a deep snuffling sound, rubbing a hand over his face. “Is what my power?” he asked.

“The emotion thing.”

Judging from the way he jumped, Jinwoo hadn’t been expecting that answer. “Emotion thing?”

Sanha shrugged. “You like...bring calm with you?” Jinwoo had stalled two panic attacks now, first in the infirmary with a hand on his wrist, and now by simply sitting next to him.

Jinwoo huffed a laugh. “You’re sharp.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m an Empath,” Jinwoo said. “I can manipulate emotions. Kind of rare, can easily be used for evil. For that reason, hardly anyone knows.” He jerked his head back towards the house. “Dongmin’s the only one that’s figured it out in there.”

Sanha exhaled with a nod. “So what do they think you are?” he asked. “If you’re the leader of a superhero unit...”

“I think the current theory is that I have a supersonic voice,” Jinwoo said with a grin. Sanha laughed lightly. “But really, I didn’t mean to become the leader of a unit. I picked Bin off the street when we were both kids, and just kind of ended up collecting a couple more along the way. Eventually Dongmin’s experiments outgrew our apartment, and the neighbors hated us going in and out all the time, so I got us this house. Served us pretty well since then.”

Looking up at the four story building, Sanha said, “It’s a nice house.”

Jinwoo’s smile had turned fond. “Yeah. It’s pretty great. Having the other units coming and going all the time is nice, too.”

After that, they both fell into silence, watching as the sun continued to rise into the air. Around them, the light was beginning to turn bright, losing its pink hue and bringing the start of the day with it. Sanha tipped his head back, letting the fresh sun soak into his face.

Beside him, Jinwoo sighed. “I should probably get up and get on some work,” he said, shuffling up with a groan. “If you need anything, my office is the first room by the stairs on the second floor.”

“Okay,” Sanha said.

“Sanha.” The shift in Jinwoo’s tone startled him, making Sanha look up. “I want you to take today easy,” Jinwoo said seriously, holding eye contact. “Your world...it’s just been thrown upside down. There’s a lot you have to work through, and a lot of decisions to be made. I hate to ask you to move quickly right now, but...”

Jinwoo trailed off, and Sanha’s stomach started to sink. Here it was, the moment he’d been waiting for since waking up - Jinwoo was going to ask him to leave.

“The dead in the explosions have begun to be identified,” Jinwoo continued, and now Sanha’s stomach was swooping in an entirely different way. “Soon, your home will be cleared out - if there’s anything you want to retrieve from it, you should do it today.” Jinwoo’s face looked pained. “Like I said, I hate that this has to happen right now. I know...I know how you’re feeling, and I know how much this sucks.”

Sanha’s ears were ringing a bit as he tried to process the thought of walking into his dead family’s apartment. “Right,” he said, unable to come up with another response.

Jinwoo crouched and put a hand on Sanha’s shoulder. Almost immediately, he was able to think clearer. The pain and numbness was still there, but Sanha was able to acknowledge them without the emotions taking over his entire psyche. “It’s not going to be easy, but it’s important that it happens,” Jinwoo said quietly. “Anyone in the house’ll be willing to take you - if I didn’t have things to finish that will have the government on my ass by the end of the day, I’d go with you myself. Do you think you’ll be okay?”

Sanha sighed. “I guess I’ll have to for right now,” he said. There was a beat, and then he looked back up to meet Jinwoo’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “For sitting with me."

The smile that Jinwoo gave him was small. “It’s what I’m here for,” he said, and then patted Sanha’s shoulder one more time before straightening up and walking back into the house, leaving Sanha alone on the porch in the morning sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> browsing the powerlisting wikia is fun just an fyi
> 
> if you enjoyed something, let me know in the comments! who do y'all think the "n unit" mentioned in the last two chapters is meant to be? (the hair colors of n unit mentioned in chapter two are as old as this fic, so from comeback eight months ago lol)


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